June 2021

With the arrival of June...

..., some of us are heading into the heat of summer while others are welcoming the cold of winter. As our community has members scattered around the globe, no matter what time of year it is, scrolling through the 365 Picture Today feed provides us with glimpses of the beauty of diversity that Mother Nature provides each and every day.

This same beauty in diversity exists amongst the amazing people who make up this community! One of the things that I love most about being a part of this group is “meeting” so many people, each of whom brings a unique perspective, literally, through daily photos, but also through the shared words and stories that accompany our photos, as well as in comments left on the photos of others. Since many of us have not been allowed or have chosen not to travel this past year, the photos of beautiful faraway places shared by others have been a welcome respite from our own familiar surroundings. Seeing other people celebrating life’s milestones, milestones that we ourselves are either long past or hoping to reach one day, becomes a catalyst for sparking memories and illuminating dreams. What a daily gift we can give to one another!

How many photography tips have been shared? An product recommendations? Recipes? Book suggestions? We all don’t enjoy shooting the same subjects or dining on the same cuisines or disappearing into the same kinds of books...that’s not the point. The point is that there is something here for everyone and everyone is welcome. That’s beauty in diversity. It is my hope that we can come together as a community to offer unified and sincere support, well-wishes, and virtual-hugs to one another.

We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” Jimmy Carter

Whatever the season of nature and the season of life in which you stand right now, embrace it, celebrate it, photograph it, share it. And may we all keep our hearts and minds open to embracing and celebrating the beauty of diversity that is us, the 365 Picture Today community!

Happy June and happy picture-taking!

Explaining the Prompts

The weekly themes designed to fire up your imagination, increase your skill level, learn new techniques and share your joy of the photography world!

PICTURE YOU week just might challenge you the most! Getting in front of the camera is important in so many ways. It teaches us how others feel when the camera is pointed at them and it allows us to be more comfortable in our own skin. When we include ourselves in a picture, it documents our days, but you don’t HAVE to be in the photo at all if it does not fit your style. There is freedom in this week, but we do challenge you to turn the lens around and get in front of it! (You have a million pictures of your family, but none of yourself, right)? Each PICTURE YOU week will have a GUEST PROMPT where a member from our community will be given the opportunity to write a prompt for us to follow! The guest prompt is designed for you as valuable members to stretch your creative abilities and show us what you’ve got!

PICTURE MORE is ‘technical week’. The prompts will let you explore your creativity with a technical agenda. This is the week to try new skills, revisit old ones and maybe learn some really interesting tricks. You might just surprise yourself with your technical genius! One of the greatest things about photography is its diversity. We will be exploring camera angles, symmetry, breaking the rules, negative space and other tricks to make your photography evolve! During this week we will be stretching ourselves with skills that may range from techniques such as light trails, long exposure, lens zooming and panning, or we may switch things up and add some processing fun!

PICTURE COLOR is all about color, a specific color on a Sunday chosen by one of the creative team that will be featured exclusively! Sometimes you will easily find these colors and other times these colours may be more difficult to find. Be patient - sometimes the color will just ‘pop’ out at you in the most unpredictable way! The color prompt week will most definitely make our galleries look lovely!

PICTURE STYLE is all about your style within different styles! Landscape, street, night, travel, portraiture, still-life, wildlife photography and other picture modes are going to be stylized to create some amazing photographs. We will also be playing around with shutter speed and double exposure to give your photos a different “pop”.

EXTRA CHALLENGES: Each month we are including SELF PORTRAIT, WHERE I STAND and MACRO MONDAY challenges. We also have the new QUARTERLY CHALLENGES. First up is PICTURE YOUR WORLD, where you hopefully will return to the same place each quarter to take the same photo (see the seasonal changes), second is the SCAVENGER HUNT that went down so well last year and finally we thought that SONG LYRICS will give us all a bit of a challenge, all totally up to you, if you want to incorporate this into your daily photo.